“Build it and they will come” is not an effective path-to-market strategy, yet many entrepreneurs and small businesses rely on this strategy without fully realizing the implications.

Companies often focus on developing cool new products, but exclude key considerations that could help them reach their commercialization goals, such as capacity to deliver, project and growth financing and most importantly, target market access.

Three strategic trajectories make up the path-to-market and work best if navigated simultaneously: Product Development and Delivery, Project and Growth Financing and Target Market Access.

In the Product Development and Delivery process, a functional prototype of your product is designed to simulate the final design, but can be scaled down to reduce costs. A pilot scale delivery, or small scale preliminary study, is conducted in order to evaluate feasibility, time, and adverse events, which then leads to production scale-up. Many companies realize that design is not a core capability and partner with someone else for prototype design and testing.

The second path is Project and Growth Financing, which provides flexibility, the ability to quickly respond to opportunities, and the capital to complete commercialization projects and grow the company.

Financing options include grant funding through state, local or non-profit entities, equity funding which is usually private funding that seeks returns from your business growth and debt funding which requires the principal and interest on debt be repaid to your investor/creditors. Perhaps the most attractive option, industry specific funding relates to your company's industry, technology or end-users and often has a much smaller competition pool than general forms of funding.

The third path-to-market is Target Market Access. It's the least understood but often the most important path, especially for small businesses in emerging industries or technologies. It's been my experience that it's best not to wait until your product is fully developed before researching target markets. The process can help to inform and guide your design efforts.

Target Market Access begins with development of a compelling value proposition that articulates the benefits your company provides. Value is often centered on cost, technology and/or service. Some questions to ask when developing your company's value proposition may include:

• Will my product lower the cost to the customer?

• Does my service create new revenue opportunities for the customer?

• Will my product help the customer to work more efficiently?

The next step is to conduct market research, which can help to size your market and understand the competition and customer. There are a variety of market research methods, including secondary research and primary research such as surveys.

"We're currently targeting the U.S. retail market to deploy electronic price tags in storefronts. The retail industry, especially in the U.S., is notoriously slow to change, so we knew early on that it wouldn't be enough to solely focus on engineering the prototype and product. We knew we would have to create a dialogue between ourselves and retailers to better understand their concerns,” says Lorktech Co-Founder and CEO Mark Lorkowski.

“Those early conversations served as a great primary research tool that has helped to guide us in the development process of our electronic pricing system, and it allows the retailers to feel involved and that their needs are actually met. That thirst for knowledge is something that I've really tried to ingrain in my team at Lorktech."

A type of primary market research that's been effective for many companies I've worked with is Voice of the Customer (VOC) research. VOC requires collecting, analyzing, and acting on feedback from your customers and incorporating those customer insights into your company's everyday decisions.

Understanding and incorporating the steps in the path-to-market is not easy or quick work. But a defined and executed path to market strategy can significantly improve chances to reach successful commercialization. There are also several impactful ways to shorten the path to market which I'll detail in my next blog.

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